


Aftermath

by Kate_Shepard



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Adopted Children, Adoption, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Mass Effect Kink Meme, Palaven, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Post-Reaper War, Protective Siblings, Self-Reflection, Shakarian - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-12 02:05:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7916203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Shepard/pseuds/Kate_Shepard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for a prompt on the Kink Meme. http://masseffectkink.livejournal.com/9521.html?thread=45396017#t45396017</p><p>Garrus and Shepard are on Palaven after the war, raising their adopted children together but, deep down, Garrus doesn't consider them "his" and on Palaven, all turians know him and temptations are countless. Will he remain loyal to Shepard? Will he do like Councilor Sparatus and take a mistress... or two... or many to have children of his own with her/them? He believes Shepard is oblivious to his dilemma but it's only because she wants to be oblivious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

“You’re Garrus Vakarian,” a female voice said as its owner slipped onto the barstool beside him. Her subvocals were bright with a mixture of awe, respect, and desire. He tried to ignore the blatant invitation. That wasn’t why he’d come here, though the reason he had come stuck in his crop and made his gullet tight. 

“I am. And you are?” he answered to be polite—at least, that’s what he tried to tell himself but turians tend to be terrible liars and he didn’t even believe himself.

“Vyxeria Elyssus,” she answered. He turned to face her and was met by a stunningly beautiful woman with the most perfectly symmetrical fringe, dainty mandibles, and tiny waist he’d ever seen. If she wasn’t a model, she was wasting her spirits-given assets. He tried not to feel flattered but failed. 

It still hadn’t entirely hit home with him that he was now one of the most highly respected turians on Palaven. In his mind, he was still the failed C-Sec officer, ruined vigilante, and disreputable bad boy with the scarred face whose only value lay in Shepard’s need for him, a need that had changed drastically since the end of the war. She no longer needed him for his aim or his skill in calibrating giant guns or his tactical advice. Her needs now were very different and damned if he didn’t feel entirely inadequate. 

“Come here often?” Vyxeria asked with a come-hither purr.

“On occasion,” he answered. Truthfully, he had begun frequenting the establishment more and more often lately. He hated to admit that he was escaping but he couldn’t deny it, either. 

“Trouble with the…wife?” Vyxeria asked. “I’d heard about you and Commander Shepard. You two have sparked quite the trend, you know. I admit, I don’t quite understand it myself. I’ve never really had a human fetish. To each their own, though.” Where Shepard might hear curiosity about the nature of a turian/human pairing, Garrus heard a wealth of meaning underlying the woman’s words. _Wouldn’t you be happier with one of your own kind? Can a creature so soft and fragile possibly truly satisfy you? Don’t you miss being with someone who can really understand you?_

Before, he would have brushed her doubts off without a second thought. He would have said that there was no one in the galaxy who understood him like Shepard; that she was the least fragile person he’d ever met; that it wasn’t about a fetish, it was about them and the bond they shared; that Shepard was the love of his life. Now, though, things had changed. Shepard wasn’t the same as she had been before and neither was he. 

“No trouble,” he denied. 

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said in a tone that clearly said, _That’s too bad._

There had been a time when his lack of confidence and awkwardness with women had been a serious inhibitor in his ability to find a partner. Now, however, he was a hero. Every turian on Palaven and all of their colonies knew his name, his face, the things he’d done. He was the Reaper expert who’d advised the Primarch and called him friend. He was half of a pair that together had ended hostilities between the turians and the krogan, brokered peace between the quarians and the geth, brought down Reapers without a fleet behind them, and saved Palaven. 

Corinthus had said one day that Garrus was now the most desirable turian in the galaxy and the attention that he’d garnered from women since returning home seemed to prove that statement. He no longer had to seek out companionship but instead turn it away. That had become more and more difficult lately and he hated himself for it. Shepard valued his loyalty above all else and there was a time when he would have called it his greatest strength. He wondered if that was still true. 

Vyxeria heard his doubts and leaned in closer. Her pheromones wrapped around him and his body began to respond without conscious thought. He was careful to keep other women at arm’s length and it had been years since he’d smelled something so desirable, so…right. Shepard’s pheromones did nothing for him. He had come to love her body because it was hers but on its own, the human body still sparked no response in him. 

This was instinctive, a promise of things that Shepard could not give him, and his body reacted to the urge to mate. He didn’t want to mate with her in the bonding sense. Shepard still owned his heart even if things had changed. That didn’t change the fact that she could not produce a child that belonged to him and this woman could. The urge to procreate was as basic as the urge to breathe and, given the state of their population, that instinct to pass on his genes grew stronger by the day. 

It didn’t seem to matter to either his body or the baser parts of his brain that there were children at home who called him Daddy. He cared about them but they weren’t _his_ children. He felt nothing but camaraderie for Grunt, whom Shepard insisted on referring to as her son. He loved the little human girl who looked like Shepard because she’d come from Shepard as the result of a fertilization from a human male donor and Chakwas had done her best to remove the male’s phenotypes so that the child was essentially a tiny clone of Shepard. He loved the little turian boy whom Shepard claimed resembled him in attitude if not appearance because the child was one of his own species and parentless. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t care about them; it was simply that they did not truly belong to him. They were her children. When she had suggested adoption that day on Earth, he’d thought it was a great idea. It was something to look forward to after the war: a family of their own. He’d liked the idea of taking in a turian child who’d lost his family. He’d hoped that seeing Shepard carry and give birth to a child while with him would negate the lack of biological connection. 

Instead, that had been an experience almost as traumatizing as seeing her after the firing of the Crucible. Turians gave birth to live young but the process was nowhere near as…messy and chaotic and their bodies didn’t change so much. Turian babies were born incredibly small and doubled in size every week or so for the first few months after birth until they caught up with the sizes of children of other races because turian females didn’t expand the way a human did. 

Shepard had—in his estimation, at least, though she and the doctor claimed she’d been smaller than normal—grown huge during her pregnancy. Her waist had almost entirely disappeared and she’d swollen so that the things that he’d come to desire about her—the delicate bones in her feet, the angles of her joints, the flat planes of her face—had softened and all but vanished. 

She’d worked hard to get herself back into fighting shape and was mostly back to normal but her breasts, which had never really interested him even before, had grown and her belly was a little softer now and bore thin silver lines that he tried to compare to scars but were entirely different. Her hips had widened a bit, which helped to keep her hip-to-waist ratio within an acceptable range. On the other hand, he was almost afraid to go near her genitals for fear of causing the kind of damage he’d seen in her after the birth. Turian women most certainly did not look like that after giving birth. 

It was more than just the mostly-subtle physical changes caused by childbirth, though. It was the changes in her body wrought by the Crucible and the changes in her personality after the war that had proven the hardest for him to accept. She’d lost a leg to a piece of rebar and a concrete pillar and the synthetic replacement made him think of Saren’s arm. Her energy levels had never returned to normal and it had gotten worse with the children, especially her daughter. She slept as little as the baby and, while that had been one thing during the war, it was now making her both testy and ragged. Her focus was primarily on the children and he’d forgotten what it was like to have a night alone with his mate. 

Vyxeria was deep into his personal space now, having heard the involuntary rumble of desire that had rolled through him. The way she looked at him was empowering. This woman wasn’t going to bitch at him for leaving gun parts lying on the table where the kids could get them or turn away from him in the night because she was too tired or greet him in the morning with a human baby latched onto her chest like a space cow with a calf and the same dull, tired eyes. This woman looked at him and saw someone desirable, someone strong and virile, and she made him feel that way. He found himself leaning into her even as warning bells began to sound in the back of his mind.

She opened her mouth to say something and shut it quickly as a new female growled a possessive warning that said clearly: back off, bitch. He turned to look in surprise at the newcomer and felt dismay wash over him. Vyxeria straightened and said, “No trouble, hmm? I see. Let me know if you change your mind.”

“He won’t,” Solana said as she wrapped an arm around his cowl. When the other woman left, she slapped the back of his neck hard. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Garrus?” she demanded. 

He hung his head in shame and said without looking at her, “I don’t know, Sol. Damn it, I…I guess I should thank you.”

“Damn right you should,” she said, sliding into Vyxeria’s vacant seat. “I know what I just saw there and I know damn good and well that Shepard did not consent to that. It’s not like you’re in an arranged marriage like Councilor Sparatus or widowed like Adrien. So why in spirits’ name are you looking for a mistress? You have a wife at home. A wife, I might point out, whom you loved enough to risk Dad disowning you in order to marry. A wife, I should add, who is currently taking care of your children while you get drunk at a bar. A wife who just happens to be the savior of the entire damn galaxy. What is going on, big brother?”

“I don’t know,” Garrus said, shredding a napkin with his talons. “Everything, I guess. They’re not my kids, Sol. They never will be. The girl, at least, is hers. The boy’s one of ours. But that doesn’t make them mine. And Shepard is…you’ve seen her. She’s changed.”

“She’s exhausted, Garrus,” Solana said disapprovingly. “What do you expect? She almost died for the second time and as soon as she was able to, she followed you here to Palaven where she can’t even go outside our house without an enviro-suit. The two of you adopted Titus less than a month later and she had no idea how to raise a turian child but she threw herself into it anyway because he didn’t have anyone else. She learned Palaveni so that she could communicate with her and her accent is admittedly atrocious but I don’t know how she even makes some of our sounds. And less than a year after that, she got pregnant with your support and spent nine whole months that way. I thought almost five was bad. She essentially carried two turian children to term back to back and then pushed that massive infant out of her body. 

“And what have you done to learn how to take care of Miri? Shepard feeds her from her own body. Shepard is the one who changes her diapers because, according to you, you can modify a gun in under a minute but you can’t handle cleaning up your kid. She cooks all of the meals for herself and all of the ones for you that I don’t. She’s the one who gets up with the baby over and over every night and the one that gets Titus ready for school and the one who cleans your area of the house. I know it isn’t commanding a warship and fighting an intergalactic war with a race of immortal sentient machines but she’s still working her ass off and she’s had no break since the end of the war. Cut her some slack, Garrus! She can’t be everything for you and those kids without help that you aren’t giving. Shepard isn’t the problem here. You are.”

“I…don’t know what to say to that,” he said, feeling ashamed.

“How about, ‘You’re right, Solana. Thanks for stopping me from making a massive mistake and throwing away the most desirable woman in the galaxy,’ for starters? Garrus, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this for a while now. I don’t think you realize just what you have. You’re so busy looking back at ‘old times’ that you can’t see what’s right in front of you. You have two beautiful children who adore you and worship the ground you walk on. You are Titus’ hero. And Miri doesn’t care one bit that you’re turian and she’s human. Her little face lights up when you walk in a room. 

“Your wife is Commander Shepard. There isn’t an unattached man on Palaven who would turn her down and there are a lot of attached ones who’d decide it was worth it just to have a night with her. She has 1,243 breeding requests on Tuchanka and gets marriage proposals from humans every day via extranet mail. When she goes to the Citadel, people of all races stop and stare. Everyone wants her. You have her and you don’t seem to appreciate her anymore. Do you remember what you said to me the first time you brought her here to meet us? When she came to bring you home before she turned herself in on Earth?”

“Yes,” he said. It wasn’t hard to remember. He’d expressed the sentiment that day and countless times after. He’d looked from Solana to Shepard, who’d been sitting beside his mother’s hospital bed and listening to the matriarch reminisce about his childhood. His mother’s stories were garbled and confused but Shepard had listened attentively anyway. He’d said, ‘How the hell did a guy like me luck out with a girl like her?’

“You counted yourself lucky,” Solana said. “You couldn’t figure out what it was that drew her to you. When you looked at yourself and saw only failure, she looked at you and saw not just the leader you became but the man you were, a good man, a loyal man, a man who would stand by her no matter the cost. She saw it when you were on the verge of being fired from C-Sec. She saw it when you were a broken vigilante who’d lost his squad. She saw it when you were lost in despair over your team. She saw it when no one else, including Dad and me as much as I hate to admit it, did. She looked at you and saw the only army she would ever need, the only thing that Commander Shepard couldn’t be herself without, the one person in the entire galaxy that she loves when she could have any man and half the women. She saw you. 

“Now, it’s time for you to do the same for her. Get your ass home. Fall on your knees and tell her how much you love her and how grateful you are to her for putting up with your shit for all these years. Help her with those children. Interact with them. _Be_ a father. Who cares if you aren’t biologically related to them? It isn’t like turians need to produce more kids right now. We still have too many orphans. Do you really think that humans don’t feel the same instinctive connection we do to our children? That hasn’t stopped her from adopting a full-grown krogan tank baby or a turian boy and loving both of them just as much as she does Miri. She didn’t have that baby because she needed to procreate. She had her because she thought that it was what you both wanted. You owe her an apology.”

“When did you become her champion?” he asked, almost defensively.

“When you stopped,” Solana shot back. “She’s my friend and, sweetheart, Shepard isn’t as oblivious as she pretends to be. She’s seen your eyes wander. She’s noted your absence and your disconnect. Haven’t you noticed that she’s started to come to me for things she should be talking to you about? Do you even know that she got offered the position as the human councilor?”

“No,” he said in surprise. He couldn’t remember the last time that he and Shepard had really talked. She was always busy with the kids and the house and trying to use her influence to help as many people as she could. 

“She told me,” Solana said. “She hates it here, Garrus. She wants to live in a place where she can feel the sun on her face even if it’s artificial. She told me that she’s gained a new sympathy for the quarians and that she doesn’t know how Tali did it because she despises enviro-suits. That’s why she almost never leaves the house. She can’t even take Miri out because she’s still too young for a suit. Shepard feels like a prisoner here and I think she would be able to deal with it if she thought she had you beside her but she doesn’t.”

Garrus thanked his sister and trudged toward home. He knew that she was right and she’d just helped him dodge a bullet. He would go to Shepard and talk to her, really talk to her this time. They had always been able to talk about things before and surely they hadn’t changed that much. A thought struck him and stopped him in his tracks. What if _she_ had stopped loving _him_? What if he had driven her away with his distance and his insistence upon settling down on his own homeworld and his disinterest in the children he was supposed to be helping her raise? 

He had spent so much time looking at what had changed in Shepard that he had failed to see what had changed in himself. He’d let himself go, too. His plates were a bit loose and showing signs of wear. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d buffed them. He still hadn’t touched up his colony markings. He hadn’t cooked a meal for Shepard in months and he’d taken the time to have Vega teach him back on the _Normandy_. He had found excuse after excuse to avoid helping with the kids and spent most of his time moping about how different things were but he, in all honesty, was the one who’d changed the most. He’d spent so much of his life fighting that he didn’t know who he was without a rifle in his hands. He wondered for the first time if this was how his dad had felt when he was young.

Shepard wasn’t inside the house and neither were the children. He found them out back in the portion of the yard that was shielded from the sun, the only place where she could be outdoors without a suit. The human baby—Miranda—was asleep in a carrier with a shade over it and his heart skipped a beat when he saw Shepard and Titus. His wife held her beloved Widow in her hands and his adopted son held his old Mantis. There were targets lined up across the way and Shepard was demonstrating the proper grip on the rifle to the boy. Titus watched her intently and mimicked her movements. A few moments later, a shot rang out. The target remained standing. 

“It’s too heavy,” Titus said. “I’m never going to be any good at this, Mom. I don’t know why we keep trying. He’s never going to be proud of me.”

Shepard knelt down in front of the boy as Garrus’ heart twisted and said gently, “Yeah, he is. Your dad’s just going through a hard time right now.”

“He doesn’t want me,” the boy said mournfully, looking down at his feet. 

Shepard leaned her head forward and Titus rested his forehead against hers. “He does want you, sweetheart. He just…isn’t all that great at showing it at first. It takes a while. And you know I love you, right?”

“Yeah,” the boy said, giving her a shy smile. He dropped his voice to a stage whisper and said, “All the kids at school are jealous. They think it’s really cool that you’re my mom even if you are a human.”

“I think it’s really cool that I’m your mom, too,” she replied in the same tone. She rose and said normally, “Now, let’s try again. Maybe someday Dad’ll tell you about learning to shoot with Granddad. He didn’t think he’d ever get it right, either, and now he’s one of the best snipers in the galaxy. I, of course, am the best but he’s a really close second. Did I ever tell you about the time he took down two guys with one bullet and gave the third a heart attack?”

“No,” Titus answered hefting the rifle again. “I just thought he was always good. Were you always good?”

“No,” she said with a chuckle. “Actually, I was an adept when I met your dad. He and our friend Thane taught me to snipe with that rifle you’re holding now. See, we’d gone onto this ship to answer a distress call that turned out to be fake and I found the Widow there. I still don’t know why I picked it up, but I did. It wasn’t designed to be carried by humans and so Garrus and Thane insisted that I learn on something a little less hazardous to my shoulder first. It took a lot of work but I eventually got it figured out and moved up to Eleanor here. She’s really the reason I’m so good. I’m not anywhere near as awesome with anything else. But don’t tell your dad I said that, okay?”

“Promise,” Titus said with a grin at being entrusted with a secret. He fired another shot and missed again. 

Garrus stepped out of the shadow of the veranda and said, “Loosen up, son. If you’re tense, it’ll throw your aim off. Just relax and let the rifle handle the hard work.”

Titus jumped and hurriedly placed the rifle on the rock he was using as a brace. The boy’s head dropped and his vocals were tight as he said, “Mom said I could use it. She said you wouldn’t mind. I’m sorry, sir. I should have asked you first. I just wanted it to be a surprise.” There was such misery in his voice on the last that Garrus inwardly kicked himself. 

He moved behind the boy and placed the rifle back into his little hands. Titus stiffened further when Garrus wrapped his arms around to help hold it steady and he realized that he’d never actually touched the child before. Shepard was constantly hugging and gently headbutting him or running a hand over the top of the boy’s developing fringe but Garrus never had. Shepard caught his eye and the reserve he saw there threatened to break his heart so he turned his attention back to Titus. “It’s fine,” he said. “We’ll make a sniper of you yet. And if you aren’t good at it, then we’ll find something else that you are. I’m proud of you for trying. You’re younger than I was when I started. Who knows? Maybe someday you’ll be a better shot than I am.”

“You think so?” Titus asked hopefully.

“Definitely,” Garrus answered with a grin. 

An hour later, the boy had finally made his first shot and then his second and his third and Shepard called it a day with a cheerful headbutt and what she called a high three. Titus helped her break down and clean the rifles and, while they did, Garrus knelt down beside the sleeping Miri. The child looked so much like Shepard that it took his breath away. The problem was that he didn’t know the first thing about human children and it was pitiful that he didn’t given that the baby was several months old now. He’d had time to learn. He had chosen not to. Garrus shook his head. It was a wonder her mother hadn’t given up on him by now. But that was his Shepard. She wouldn’t stop trying until she’d exhausted every available option apart from walking away. 

The baby started to fuss and Garrus looked helplessly at her, trying to figure out how to free her from the contraption she was strapped into. Shepard came to his rescue. “Like this,” she said, showing him how the various buckles and straps functioned. She lifted the child into her arms and cooed down at her. Miri smiled and gurgled at her for a moment before turning her attention to him. Solana was right. Even as a baby, Miranda beamed at him when she saw him. He reached out and Shepard placed her carefully into his arms, showing him just how to hold her to support her head and neck and how to cradle to make her feel secure. 

He found himself captivated by the child’s smile and when he looked up at the mother, there was something in her eyes that he hadn’t seen in a long time. It took him a few minutes to recognize it as hope. It was a reserved, fragile hope but it was there nonetheless. Alongside it was the same pride he’d seen in her on countless occasions when he’d done something that she’d known all along that he could accomplish but that he himself had doubted. That look, he realized, was better than all the shallow lust and hero worship of strangers that he could ever receive. 

“Hi, Daddy,” she whispered. “About time you showed up. I missed you.”

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. 

“You’re here now,” she said. 

A part of him wondered how it could be that easy and wanted to attribute it to her not knowing the truth. Then he looked at her again and rethought her words and realized that she _did_ know. She might be retired but she was still Commander Shepard and she’d always been able to read him. She’d always known him better than he knew himself. She knew in broad strokes if not in details and yet she’d waited him out just like she always had, having faith that he would find his way home to her. She had always had more faith in him than he had in himself and, somehow, he always managed to live up to her expectations. He wondered if that was because of him or because of her.

“Shepard, wait,” he said as she started to turn toward the house. She looked back at him curiously and he lowered his forehead to hers. The shuddering sigh that left her body told him just how afraid she’d been that she had been wrong this time and how relieved she was that she wasn’t. It also told him just how much she truly did still need him. “I love you, Shepard,” he said quietly. “I always will.” 

“I know,” she said. “I love you, too, Garrus.”


End file.
